Oak Cliff sweet shop totes the joy of macarons to Greenville Avenue

Oak Cliff sweet shop totes the joy of macarons to Greenville Avenue

Add another cool culinary treat to the menu on Greenville Avenue.
Photo courtesy of Joy Macarons

Greenville Avenue gets another hit of hipness and another edible business with the expansion of Joy Macarons, the sweet shop on Davis Street in Oak Cliff founded by Liz Lanier.

The shop will open in a former hair salon next door to Dude, Sweet Chocolate, another Oak Cliff emigre. Lanier says that Greenville Avenue is the perfect place for a macaron shop.

"We wanted to open a second location and love Lower Greenville so much," she says. "I'd been keeping an eye on the street to see what might open, and we got the opportunity when the building became available."

Lanier founded her company in 2013 out of a passion for macarons, baking them out of her home and selling them at the Dallas Farmers Market. In November 2014, she opened her first brick-and-mortar space in what was formerly the Rose Garden home decor store (and before that, a gift shop and boutique called From the Ends of the Earth).

Joy's lineup of flavors extends from basics such as chocolate to novel complexities such as honey and lavender or lemon fleur de sel. The Greenville Avenue space is about the same as the David Street shop, but she'll tweak the format based on lessons learned in Oak Cliff.

"It won't be an exact replica," she says. "We've had a lot of success with our ice cream sandwiches, so one thing that will be unique is that we'll feature those much more prominently in the Greenville space."

These are the spectacular ice cream sandwiches with an extra-thick layer of ice cream between the two macarons. One recent ice cream sandwich combined the flavors of bergamot and orange; another had red velvet ice cream sandwiched between vanilla cookies.

Joy Macarons makes ice cream in-house with a recipe that cleverly uses raw materials the shop already has. "We do a custard base for our ice cream using the egg yolks we don't use in our macarons," she says.

The shop always tries to have a dairy-free flavor and has played around with some vegan offerings.

"I love macarons because they are very flexible," Lanier says. "They're tricky to make, but all of our flavor combinations lend to our creativity and our ability to keep things fresh. And I like that they are not a huge commitment as far as a treat. It's just a couple of sweet bites."